Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1887-05-09

out the rags. The sorted rags are
placed in a chopping-machine which
treats them like sausage meat, and
after making the old dresses and
trousers into little squares and trian-
giles, too small for even baby's era
" quilt, it whiffs them into another
machine, where the dust is taken out
of them and they are cleaned. From
that on the life of the rags is a sue
cession of baths in chloride of lime
and other bleaching and cleansing
chemicals, with occasional visits to
vats, and rips through sets of sharp
knives and fine-toothed rollers. FL
nally the many colored rags come out
in nice white mush that looks like
thin flour paste. This is shaken over
wire to get the water out Of il, and
put through a few score rollers and
a glue bath before it comes out as
postal-card paper.
At the end of the long rolls that
have been squeezing it down thin
enough and putting the pale gloss on
it, the long sheet of postal-card pa
per, several yards wide, is either cut
up into sheets 2lx3OH inches, as it
is rolled up, four postal cards wide,
to be put on the automatic presses
that print from a roll. Each sheet
will soon be forty postal-cards. When
the paper has been calendered it is
taken from the paper-mill,a "a few feet,
to the postal-card factory. In the big
room of the postal-card factory are a
dozen men, two dozen girls, a large
Campbell press, four small cutters
and big cutter, stacks of boxes, large
tables, and web of gearing and
belts overhead. The sheets are taken
to the press, where two feeders feed
forty-one sheets minute ,760 pos
tal-cards every sixty seconds. The
postal cards are printed from steel
plates so hard that there is not a file
in the factory than will make an inn
preston on them. Each card has a
separate steel plate, and the eighty
that are needed to make the impress
sions on the two sheets are wedged
in the end Of the press. The plates
come from Washington, and last two
years without renewal.
The sheets of postal cards are ear
ried from the press n few feet to the
feeders, who are women with long eX-
perience at their work. They are
paid 4115 cents per 100000, and can
feed from 5000 to 600, 900 "A day.
The sheets as they come To the feed
er have previously been cut into long
slips one card wide and ten long.
The women feed them through anoth-
er cutter that turns them out separ-
ate cards. Three girls take the cards
from one feeder, ,one girl counts them
to see that there are twenty-five in
each package, and the other two put
paper binders around the packages.
In press a feeder feeds double, or
two sheets at "A time, and can feed
fOur sheets at n time
After leaving the girls at the feed
ing machines the postal cards are
made in bundles ready for sale, just
as they look in a country post-oilice.
But before shipment they are boxed.
Twenty packages of twenty-five each
are put in a pasteboard box that by
contract must be muslin bound. Five
girls put on the muslin binding and
are paid fifteen cents for binding 100
boxes. Other girls take the packages
of cards and put them in the boxes,
which are then ready for shipment.
No smaller order than 500 is filed.
Orders of 10000 and over are put up
in wooden cases, the largest single
package being a box that holds 25,-
900 cards.-N. y. SUn.